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OK this one might be a little weird, but I was thinking about how a lot of players hate the concept of the first turn having a significant impact on the game. Many times a very shooty army that is going first can wipe a lot of units off the table before they can even aim their own weapons. I have always disliked this about the game as well, but what can I do about it? This is how 40K works.

So...would removing the concept of player turns from the game change the structure of the game for the better or worse?

What would happen if we didn't use player turns and based each model's phases on their initiative?

For example the units with the highest initiative would move first, use psychic powers, first, shoot first, and go into melee combat first. Of course you wouldn't want the initiative to allow and entire side to go first though. Maybe the player who wins on the roll off used to determine who goes first moves a unit they control that has the highest initiative in their army first and then the opposing player does the same. You could do this with all phases giving each player a better chance to use most of their models before they are destroyed entirely. This change in the game would make it a RTS/Turn Based hybrid game.

I've heard this idea before, and I really think it could be cool. And to my knowledge there are a handful of games that actually use a similar method of staggered turns, instead of complete phases.

However, the Codex for each army would have to be revamped to compensate for initiative becoming a much more influential stat. There are two scenarios that could be abused very easily:

Units with highest initiative go first, in descending order regardless of who controls them. Problem: people would be able to spam quick units from armies such as Eldar or DE that would still alpha strike any slower Codex's.

Units with highest initiative go first, but for each controlling player back-and-forth: Problem: There is no reason to take any high initiative models since you will get a move every other model regardless. An entire army of initiative 1 models would still get as many turns as an army of initiative 6 models.

 clamclaw wrote:

Units with highest initiative go first, but for each controlling player back-and-forth: Problem: There is no reason to take any high initiative models since you will get a move every other model regardless. An entire army of initiative 1 models would still get as many turns as an army of initiative 6 models.

I see your point here. This would be a problem. I know orks would like it though!

I have no idea how to fix that problem. The question is, would this new problem be better or worse than what we have now?

I Go You Go isn't a terribly balanced method.

Here is how I would solve it.

Movement, we alternate moving models, roll off to see who goes first.

Shooting,men alternate shooting, though all shooting is considered simultaneous. No removal of models etc until the end of the phase. Everything will still get to shoot.

Assault phase,me alternate declaring assaults and then alternate moving the models and firing over watch.


It would take a bit to coordinate, and some rules would need tweaking, but it'd work. Most effects in the game would be happening simultaneously.

 Zagman wrote:
I Go You Go isn't a terribly balanced method.

Here is how I would solve it.

Movement, we alternate moving models, roll off to see who goes first.

Shooting,men alternate shooting, though all shooting is considered simultaneous. No removal of models etc until the end of the phase. Everything will still get to shoot.

Assault phase,me alternate declaring assaults and then alternate moving the models and firing over watch.


It would take a bit to coordinate, and some rules would need tweaking, but it'd work. Most effects in the game would be happening simultaneously.

I thought about this as well and believe it is a good solution. I don't know if this is a problem or not but something seems off about everyone shooting and faster models not having an advantage of shooting faster that a slower target.

 Zagman wrote:


Movement, we alternate moving models, roll off to see who goes first.

Shooting,men alternate shooting, though all shooting is considered simultaneous. No removal of models etc until the end of the phase. Everything will still get to shoot.

Assault phase,me alternate declaring assaults and then alternate moving the models and firing over watch.

I like the idea of parsing the phases up and letting each player participate. One of the worst things about I Go You Go is sitting for 30 minutes watching your opponent essentially play with themselves.

Movement would be best every-other, and I think instead of basing it on initiative just let the player choose the model they want to move.

Shooting could be tricky for a few special rules (battle focus? or maybe that would just be in the assault phase) but no removal until ned of phase would help a player at least be able to return fire before they're tabled.

The assault is where it could get really messy though. Moving through units, resolving distances, run rolls, multi-assaults... Overall though I would be willing to give something like this a shot.

Lord Scythican wrote:

 Zagman wrote:
I Go You Go isn't a terribly balanced method.

Here is how I would solve it.

Movement, we alternate moving models, roll off to see who goes first.

Shooting,men alternate shooting, though all shooting is considered simultaneous. No removal of models etc until the end of the phase. Everything will still get to shoot.

Assault phase,me alternate declaring assaults and then alternate moving the models and firing over watch.


It would take a bit to coordinate, and some rules would need tweaking, but it'd work. Most effects in the game would be happening simultaneously.

I thought about this as well and believe it is a good solution. I don't know if this is a problem or not but something seems off about everyone shooting and faster models not having an advantage of shooting faster that a slower target.

Sure, but where balance is concerned it can't work that way without a serious rewrite to the whole game.

clamclaw wrote:

 Zagman wrote:


Movement, we alternate moving models, roll off to see who goes first.

Shooting,men alternate shooting, though all shooting is considered simultaneous. No removal of models etc until the end of the phase. Everything will still get to shoot.

Assault phase,me alternate declaring assaults and then alternate moving the models and firing over watch.

I like the idea of parsing the phases up and letting each player participate. One of the worst things about I Go You Go is sitting for 30 minutes watching your opponent essentially play with themselves.

Movement would be best every-other, and I think instead of basing it on initiative just let the player choose the model they want to move.

Shooting could be tricky for a few special rules (battle focus? or maybe that would just be in the assault phase) but no removal until ned of phase would help a player at least be able to return fire before they're tabled.

The assault is where it could get really messy though. Moving through units, resolving distances, run rolls, multi-assaults... Overall though I would be willing to give something like this a shot.

Yep, you've hit the nail on the head. Its doable for sure, but some things would need tweeks and it definitely should be a choose and alternate, when one side runs out, the other side finishes. It would be "Shoot or Run" and with Battle Focus you'd just do both right away when that unit activated for that phase.

Assault gets messy, but all you do it make declarations for each unit, alternating. Then move them alternating, sure some untits may get assaulted or counter assaulted, or some declarations won't work, but that is tactics, end of phase after combat resolution do Jetpack Assault Moves, etc.

Though, this really removes the ability to Jump Shoot Jump, etc and would really alter how the game is played, some some units that rely on that may take a hit.

Its workable!

I propose Real Fog of War. Set up a curtain Splitting table in half a la U Sunkz Ma Bat Tel Shipz! First turn player gets vision obscured n can only shoot at enemy infiltrated stuff that is on his table half. After 1st turn, remove curtain n play regularly.

Moving by initiative stat would actually be interesting with a codex like Tau, where the other army would likely be moving everything before you moved. Sets up the possibility to push a side without giving away your intention until the after enemy has already shown you what their plans are.

And eldar could have their special curtains that provide 6" extra range to where they can look.

I had not really considered the advantage to low initiative... Kind of interesting, you could bait players into positions or focus your movements more.

I'm going to see if I can get a quick game with someone to try this out!

That is a radical change in how the game is played...in essence this game is a different game than 40k.

A simpler solution would be the first player can only fire with half of his units that have a shooting attack, round up. This could be negated somewhat by adding a lot of throwaway MSU units, but at the cost of adding tons of potential kill points.

Half of the units shooting seems kind of pointless though. Most of the 1st turn hurt comes from long range anyways. Any army is going to have dedicated melee or at least shorter range units that would not have shot on turn 1 in either case. I just don't see it making a huge impact.

The fog of war idea is cool too, though could be a tricky deal for setup. I'm just imaging a bunch of janky bath curtains all over the table...

Alternating activation for each phase really is the only workable solution along these lines.


Using Initiative causes lots of issues as most armies didn't pay for that initiative to help across the board, but only in melee.

Coming from bolt action I can say that alternative activation is so much better than 40k is barely playable for me any more.

This initiative stat stuff just seems like a whole lot of muckin about though. Just give alternative unit activations and boom, thats the rule sussed right there.

Only issue would be melee - that could be resolved all at once at the end of the turn maybe

Edit: @ Zagman, whats the issue with alternative whole activations for units? Move shoot etc then move onto the next guy? Its definitely faster and from my experience with BA it works very very well

 Zagman wrote:
most armies didn't pay for that initiative to help across the board, but only in melee.

Exactly, the profiles were never made for this type of gameplay. Initiative based activation would be too easy to exploit/break balance.

Instead of basing all the phases on Initiative, you could determine activation based on BS for Shooting and Unit Type for movement. Faster units move first. Units with better BS shoot first and units with higher Initiative charge first. All actions at each level are performed simultaneously. For example... everything with BS 6 will activate at the same time, removing casualties only after all BS 6 units have fired. etc.

I think it should work this way.

A game turn involves all units being activated.

A player turn involves a single unit being activated.

At the beginning of the game you roll (like normal) to determine who goes first. At the end of each game turn first player is passed. (if you activate first on game turn 1 you activate second on game turn 2).

At the beginning of each game turn the first player rolls to generate warp charges. The warp charges generated are used for both psychic tests and deny the witch. If 1d6 plus mastery levels is too little try 2d6 or 3d6.

A player turn involves selecting a unit to activate, moving it, shooting, and assaulting. Psychic powers can be cast at any time so long as they are legal to cast. I.e. No assaulting and then firing off witchfires. This allows a unit to cast buffs and such before moving out of range of units that have not activated yet. Or moving into position and then casting witchfire novas.

The only part that get awkward is assaults. The way I have thought of to make it work is not the most elegant but here I goes.

The assault itself takes place at the end of the assaulting units activation. It all goes down just like normal. If, in a later activation a 3rd unit joins the assault the assault happens again with each MODEL that already participated in a assault this game turn reducing their number of attacks by 2 to a minimum of 1 for each assault they have been in.


Forget activating based on bs like initive. Just alternate back and forth.

 clamclaw wrote:
Half of the units shooting seems kind of pointless though. Most of the 1st turn hurt comes from long range anyways. Any army is going to have dedicated melee or at least shorter range units that would not have shot on turn 1 in either case. I just don't see it making a huge impact.

The fog of war idea is cool too, though could be a tricky deal for setup. I'm just imaging a bunch of janky bath curtains all over the table...

or just get table cloth to cover 2nd player table half.

 Filch wrote:

 clamclaw wrote:
Half of the units shooting seems kind of pointless though. Most of the 1st turn hurt comes from long range anyways. Any army is going to have dedicated melee or at least shorter range units that would not have shot on turn 1 in either case. I just don't see it making a huge impact.

The fog of war idea is cool too, though could be a tricky deal for setup. I'm just imaging a bunch of janky bath curtains all over the table...

or just get table cloth to cover 2nd player table half.

Nope, smoke machines. Clearly the most dramatic and effective. Now where do I get dry ice...

 Dakkamite wrote:
Coming from bolt action I can say that alternative activation is so much better than 40k is barely playable for me any more.

This initiative stat stuff just seems like a whole lot of muckin about though. Just give alternative unit activations and boom, thats the rule sussed right there.

Only issue would be melee - that could be resolved all at once at the end of the turn maybe

Edit: @ Zagman, whats the issue with alternative whole activations for units? Move shoot etc then move onto the next guy? Its definitely faster and from my experience with BA it works very very well

I never really addressed this version, but It's workable for sure. There may be issues if one army has a lot more units than the other, and the assault and fight subphases, but it definitely could work and could work well.

 Zagman wrote:

 Dakkamite wrote:
Coming from bolt action I can say that alternative activation is so much better than 40k is barely playable for me any more.

This initiative stat stuff just seems like a whole lot of muckin about though. Just give alternative unit activations and boom, thats the rule sussed right there.

Only issue would be melee - that could be resolved all at once at the end of the turn maybe

Edit: @ Zagman, whats the issue with alternative whole activations for units? Move shoot etc then move onto the next guy? Its definitely faster and from my experience with BA it works very very well

I never really addressed this version, but It's workable for sure. There may be issues if one army has a lot more units than the other, and the assault and fight subphases, but it definitely could work and could work well.

The idea that one army having more units would be a problem is false. Any issue that might occur already happens in 40k now. Instead it creates a scenario where you have to make the tactical choice, more smaller units with more activations or less activations with larger more survivable units.

Lance845 wrote:

 Zagman wrote:

 Dakkamite wrote:
Coming from bolt action I can say that alternative activation is so much better than 40k is barely playable for me any more.

This initiative stat stuff just seems like a whole lot of muckin about though. Just give alternative unit activations and boom, thats the rule sussed right there.

Only issue would be melee - that could be resolved all at once at the end of the turn maybe

Edit: @ Zagman, whats the issue with alternative whole activations for units? Move shoot etc then move onto the next guy? Its definitely faster and from my experience with BA it works very very well

I never really addressed this version, but It's workable for sure. There may be issues if one army has a lot more units than the other, and the assault and fight subphases, but it definitely could work and could work well.

The idea that one army having more units would be a problem is false. Any issue that might occur already happens in 40k now. Instead it creates a scenario where you have to make the tactical choice, more smaller units with more activations or less activations with larger more survivable units.

Not false, can't be false as it is an opinion.

For instance, ones army with lots of units will most likely be the one choosing assaults, or able to hide their army, waste enough activations every round to aloha strike. Ie throwing down a handful of Lobbas, and Deftkoptas is six activations and 144pts. Or Guard, activate transport move. Later activate unit, disembark, shoot, etc. Given the right framework of a game this isn't a problem, but plugging into 40k it is problematic.

Guard and extreme MSU will be problematic in terms of experience, not necessarily game functioning.

Eh, from the games I've played with alternative activations (Malifaux, Bolt Action - even Infinity with its order pool is subject to "unit spam") its more of a tactical element than a balance issue.

Remember you've still gotta fit the force org, and really theres only a few ways to truly spam the unit count (which you've mentioned - but those are covered in your errata are they not?). Better to fix those than to say that they break the system

 Zagman wrote:

Lance845 wrote:

 Zagman wrote:

 Dakkamite wrote:
Coming from bolt action I can say that alternative activation is so much better than 40k is barely playable for me any more.

This initiative stat stuff just seems like a whole lot of muckin about though. Just give alternative unit activations and boom, thats the rule sussed right there.

Only issue would be melee - that could be resolved all at once at the end of the turn maybe

Edit: @ Zagman, whats the issue with alternative whole activations for units? Move shoot etc then move onto the next guy? Its definitely faster and from my experience with BA it works very very well

I never really addressed this version, but It's workable for sure. There may be issues if one army has a lot more units than the other, and the assault and fight subphases, but it definitely could work and could work well.

What I am saying is that it being a problem is false.

The idea that one army having more units would be a problem is false. Any issue that might occur already happens in 40k now. Instead it creates a scenario where you have to make the tactical choice, more smaller units with more activations or less activations with larger more survivable units.

Not false, can't be false as it is an opinion.

For instance, ones army with lots of units will most likely be the one choosing assaults, or able to hide their army, waste enough activations every round to aloha strike. Ie throwing down a handful of Lobbas, and Deftkoptas is six activations and 144pts. Or Guard, activate transport move. Later activate unit, disembark, shoot, etc. Given the right framework of a game this isn't a problem, but plugging into 40k it is problematic.

Guard and extreme MSU will be problematic in terms of experience, not necessarily game functioning.

What I am saying is that the idea that it would somehow create new problems that don't already exist as non problems in the game is false. Anything you can do now by having more units is everything you can do then. The only change, and a positive one, is that which order you activate in becomes a tactical decision.

So, let's go with alternating phases; basing activation on initiative would imbalance the game. Activating a single unit per turn would make the game take too long to resolve.

Player A moves.

Player B moves

Player A has a psychic yhatzee phase

Player B has his psychic phase

Player A shoots

Player B shoots

Player A announces charges and resolves combat

Player B announces charges and resolves those combats

Now, combat would get weird and the psychic phase would have to be reworked.

let's say there is one psychic phase, where we alternate casting psychic powers and have to allocate denial dice to powers cast in the same phase as our own.

then close combat would have to happen 'simultaneously' and I have no idea how the specifics would work out with that one


But what I'm really worried about is the little tweaks one would have to make for this to work that wouldn't crop up until you played a game.

What rules mention 'turn player,' 'player turn,' 'game turn,' or something else like that that would need fixed now?

I want this to work, but specifics would be hard.

 Powerfisting wrote:
So, let's go with alternating phases; basing activation on initiative would imbalance the game. Activating a single unit per turn would make the game take too long to resolve.

Player A moves.

Player B moves

Player A has a psychic yhatzee phase

Player B has his psychic phase

Player A shoots

Player B shoots

Player A announces charges and resolves combat

Player B announces charges and resolves those combats

Now, combat would get weird and the psychic phase would have to be reworked.

let's say there is one psychic phase, where we alternate casting psychic powers and have to allocate denial dice to powers cast in the same phase as our own.

then close combat would have to happen 'simultaneously' and I have no idea how the specifics would work out with that one


But what I'm really worried about is the little tweaks one would have to make for this to work that wouldn't crop up until you played a game.

What rules mention 'turn player,' 'player turn,' 'game turn,' or something else like that that would need fixed now?

I want this to work, but specifics would be hard.

Well without the Psychic Phase it is very similar to how BattleTech works and it works well.

Very good suggestions everyone! It seems like this is something people would want, so let's figure out a way to make it work and playtest a few games.


So is the general consensus this?

Basing unit actions on Initiative is bad. So we will alternate actions instead. Players get to choose what unit they activate first. The unit can only perform the action that is allowed in that phase?

This all reminds me of a Nintendo game I used to play called Godzilla: Monster of Monsters where you could only move one monster at a time.

 Lord Scythican wrote:
Very good suggestions everyone! It seems like this is something people would want, so let's figure out a way to make it work and playtest a few games.


So is the general consensus this?

Basing unit actions on Initiative is bad. So we will alternate actions instead. Players get to choose what unit they activate first. The unit can only perform the action that is allowed in that phase?

This all reminds me of a Nintendo game I used to play called Godzilla: Monster of Monsters where you could only move one monster at a time.

1: Movement Phase: Alternating units would work fine.

2: Psychic Phase: Each Player having their Psychic Phase back to back would be fine.

3: I believe that all of the Shooting Weapons should have their own Initiative that they shoot at (similarly to how Initiative works in close combat) This way the more devastating heavy weapons would have lower Initiatives, showing that they take longer to aim, charge up, or whatever, than something like a Bolter that's literally ready to fire in an instant. Letting the lighter weapons fire first guarantees that both sides get to fire most of their stuff without one side being devastated just because he lost a roll-off against a shooty army.

4: For the Assault Phase, if we've gotten rid of player turns, they could use their close-combat Initiative stats for determining order of declaring Assaults (If a unit of guardsmen is walking along, and a unit of Tyranids is fast enough to launch out of nowhere and latch on their faces, then the Tyranids should have the assault bonus. But if for any reason the Tyranids didn't attack the Guardsmen could assault them. This also means that if you assault a unit in the middle of a gun line, then the nearby units have the chance to join the fray to help their allies, without having to sit out a round of combat.

Yes, this would be a huge change to the game, but I think it would be worth making.

I think also it depends, do you want Balance or RTS Tactical Realism?